


One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor...

by fringedweller



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Christmas Exchange 2010, F/M, First Time, accidentally married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-27
Updated: 2010-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-23 15:50:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fringedweller/pseuds/fringedweller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The prompt was:  Drunken night out at a bar on Risa (or other Las-Vegas-esque planet of your choosing) leads to McCoy and Chapel waking up in bed together, married. Yes, this trope. And neither of them can remember a thing about what or how it happened, nor whether they've had sex. Uncomfortable and embarrassed, please! Other people ::coughKirkcough:: find out and tease them, making their lives a living hell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor...

Title: One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor...  
Author: [](http://fringedweller.livejournal.com/profile)[**fringedweller**](http://fringedweller.livejournal.com/)  
Rating: Um, not very high, sorry. PG-13? Possibly?  
Pairing: McCoy/Chapel  
Beta: The amazing [](http://seren-ccd.livejournal.com/profile)[**seren_ccd**](http://seren-ccd.livejournal.com/)  
Warnings: None  
Length: 5271 words  
Summary: The prompt was: Drunken night out at a bar on Risa (or other Las-Vegas-esque planet of your choosing) leads to McCoy and Chapel waking up in bed together, married. Yes, this trope. And neither of them can remember a thing about what or how it happened, nor whether they've had sex. Uncomfortable and embarrassed, please! Other people ::coughKirkcough:: find out and tease them, making their lives a living hell.  
Disclaimer: Wow, so not mine it's unreal. Obviously, no money being made.

Hope you enjoy it, [](http://esme-green.livejournal.com/profile)[**esme_green**](http://esme-green.livejournal.com/)!

Christine Chapel has had hangovers before. You don’t grow up in the Big Easy and not suffer once or twice. A month.

But this hangover? Worse than every other one she’s ever had _combined_ , including the one that the entire crew had that time they flew through the nebula that turned out to be made of mutated ethyl alcohol molecules that leeched their way through the ship’s hull.

The first time she opened her eyes, the pain was so blinding that she screwed them shut again immediately. The tiny gesture was enough to set her head pounding and her stomach rolling. She clutched at the sheets in an attempt to stop herself from falling off the spinning bed and blacked out gratefully a minute or two later.

The second time she woke up, the world was no longer revolving, although her stomach was still doing a merry whirl. She was able to keep her eyes open long enough to confirm that she was in her Risan hotel room and it was sometime in the early afternoon, and then she fell back asleep.

As ever, the third time was the charm. When she came back to consciousness again she no longer wanted to throw up immediately. The fading light from the window told her that she had slept most of the day away, and it only took her two attempts to focus on the clock on her nightstand.

The problem with Starfleet, Christine decided, was the banning of real alcohol on ships. The crew got used to synthehol and the occasional bottle of moonshine from whatever still the engineers had going, and so their tolerance to the real stuff fell away. Then they’d get shore leave somewhere fabulous, like Risa, and waste most of it sleeping off hangovers.

A shower would help, she thought through the fine haze of alcohol that was left washing around in her brain. A shower, then she would rummage through her bags for some of the detox kits that med staff routinely carried with them on leave for situations just like this.  
After that she’d sit quietly in her room and promise whatever god was listening that she’d live a quiet and virtuous life if he or she would just stop her head from exploding.

Christine tugged back the bed covers, and paused. She didn’t usually sleep naked; too many red alerts mid-sleep cycle had taught her the virtue of ensuring she could dash to sickbay at a moment’s notice. Yet here she was, naked as the day she was born. And while she could blame her nudity on the vast amount of alcohol she had consumed the night before, she was pretty sure that the third arm she seemed to have sprouted was nothing to do with the cocktails that Gaila had been supplying her with all night.

The arm was masculine, with a firm muscles and a dusting of dark hair. It was draped across her waist, and the hand that belonged to it was spread across her ribcage. The hand was large, with neatly clipped nails. Tentative exploration behind her revealed that the arm was connected to a warm body, also firmly muscled, that grunted slightly and pulled her tightly back against him.

This was her room, Christine noted, as she took in the suitcases in the corner and her collection of cosmetics on the dresser. She wouldn’t be able to get away with slipping out of the door and pretending that last night didn’t happen. She’d have to face the man behind her, and do the whole awkward morning-after conversation.

She had just finished steeling herself for the task ahead of her when a glint of light caught her eye. A slender ring was circling the fourth finger of her left hand. _Digitus annularis_ her brain prompted, unhelpfully. Use in many countries on Earth as the “ring finger” because of the myth of the _vena amoris_ , a vein that connected directly to the heart.

Christine hadn’t worn a ring on that finger for years, not since she had caught her fiancé, Roger, cheating with his impossibly pneumatic assistant. When he had brazenly demanded the ring back, she had refused, sold it, and given the money to his closest rival to fund research that ultimately refuted Roger’s pet theory and sent him back to academic obscurity.

Why yes, Christine Chapel can be a bitch of the highest magnitude when she’s provoked. That’s why most people don’t provoke her.

In fact, the only person that rattles her cage on an almost daily basis is her titular boss. Titular, in that when comes down to the everyday running of sickbay, everybody knows that she’s the one that’s in charge. That frees his time up to pull medical miracles out of his (toned and muscular) ass, and get on her last nerve.

A closer look at the hand on her ribcage reveals a matching ring on his fourth finger. His band is thicker, but both are inscribed with Risan symbols she vaguely recognises from brochures and advertising materials. Her ring is embedded with a chip of carnelian, a deep lustrous brown. His has a small, pale sapphire, the colour, she noted grimly, of her eyes.

“Oh _shit_ ,” she said heavily, the implication of the rings hitting her like a frying pan to the face.

“Could have been worse,” a familiar voice drawled blearily behind her. “It could have been Jim you were waking up with.”

A snort of laughter forced its way out of her throat, unbidden and unwelcome.

“The same applies to you, you know,” she replied.

“Trust me, darlin’,” the voice said with feeling. “I _know_.”

 

There was nothing to do but sit up then, awkwardly clutching the bed sheet around her. Sure enough, there was Leonard McCoy , her boss and occasional masturbatory fantasy, sitting in her bed, naked except for the end of the sheet and a circle of silver metal. His hair was tousled, stubble darkened his jawline and he had small red marks decorating the skin of his neck and collarbone.

Christine briefly prayed that she hadn’t been the one to put them there, and then felt a flare of jealousy at the thought that some other woman had.

(Alright, so maybe her fantasies of him were more than _occasional_. But could you blame her? Had anybody seen how outrageously hot the CMO was? Was it her fault that she liked her men tall, dark and grumpy?)

“Well,” McCoy started, and then paused, looking down at his naked chest and across at her.

Christine gripped the sheet tighter about herself.

“I don’t remember anything,” Christine blurted, “About last night, I mean.”

And it was true. Christine could remember getting ready, leaving the hotel with a gang of her girlfriends. She could remember the bar they had chosen, and everything else up to the point where she sipped the delicious cocktail that Gaila had bought her. And then nothing, until she woke up with her naked boss wrapped around her body.

“Me either,” McCoy said, rubbing his forehead. “I mean, there was Jim, and a bar, but...nothing.”

“Concentrate,” Christine ordered. “Maybe something will come back to you.”

They both tried, but nothing was forthcoming.

“My head aches too much,” McCoy complained.

“I have a detox kit in the bathroom,” Christine said. She was about to offer to get it when McCoy pushed himself upright and then stumbled towards the bathroom. Christine got a long look at his broad back and an ass that was even better unclothed. Then she squeaked and dived under the covers. She rummaged around under the pillows and found the nightdress she had put there when she unpacked, and pulled it on. It wasn’t exactly designed to conceal, but it was better than being completely naked.

She heard a hypospray deploy with a familiar hiss, and a rustle of fabric.

“You can come out now,” he told her, a hint of amusement in his voice. “I’ve put some clothes on.”

Christine peered out from the safety of the covers to confirm his story. He had pulled on a pair of boxer shorts, and that was it. At her raised eyebrow he lifted up a dress shirt.

“No point putting this on,” he said. “All the buttons have come off.”

Somewhere in the back of Christine’s mind came the sense memory of smooth, soft cotton under her hands, stretched over taut, hot muscle. It had parted easily, sending half a dozen small, white discs flying through the air to land on the smooth marble floor with a plinking noise. Masculine laughter followed the _plink plink plink_ , and that was all her brain would give her.

Christine winced.

“Um,” she said in apology. “I think that may have been me.”

“That’s alright,” McCoy said, far too cheerfully for someone who woke up naked and possibly married in his subordinate’s hotel room. “Because I think I did this.”

He waved a few scraps of material at her, the colour and pattern familiar.

“That’s my dress,” she said, scowling. “Or, at least, it was.”

She frowned, and looked him dead in the eye. “What the hell happened last night, McCoy?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “But I think it’s a good idea that we find out before anybody else does.”

Of course, that idea was rendered moot by the entrance of room service with their pre-booked wedding breakfast, the Risan priestess who arrived to bless their wedding bed in the name of fecundity and their best friends, who came to congratulate them on their drunken marriage.  
Christine took in the magenta-robed woman who was sprinkling some kind of dried herbs over her lap, the room service attendants who were uncovering dish after dish of aromatic food and Jim Kirk, who was slapping McCoy on the back in the manner of one who, for once, was _not_ the person who had done something stupid the night before.

Then she threw up spectacularly, right over her new husband.

 

It was lucky that medical professionals were used to being vomited on; McCoy had her into the bathroom before she could blink. As she retched into the toilet bowl she heard the shower turn on; he was obviously using this opportunity to hose himself off. By the time her stomach stopped cramping, he had dried off, and was using one of the robes that was hanging on a peg on the wall.

“Drink this,” he said kindly, passing her a glass of water, and she rinsed her mouth and took small sips. He then passed her the mouthwash, and gave her the detox hypo he didn’t get around to giving her before.

He brushed aside her stammering apologies and merely advised her to have a shower. The hypo kicked in half way through, so she was able to actually wash herself rather than just lean against the wall under the spray. She too donned a robe, and when she returned to the main room she found everybody gone, along with the majority of the food and the fouled sheets from the bed.

“I kept the toast,” McCoy told her. “You should try to eat something.”

He held out a piece and she took it, nibbling it gingerly until it became apparent that her stomach wasn’t going to rebel again.

“So,” she said nervously, and trailed off.

“So,” he agreed, flicking at the band around his finger and not meeting her eye.

“What the hell happened last night?” Christine said eventually, no longer able to keep the words in.

“We got married,” McCoy said simply. “At least, that’s what I can gather from the priestess and Jim.”

He picked up a photograph that one of the visitors had left behind and handed it to her.

There she was, the now-ripped dress clinging as provocatively to her as she clung to McCoy, who was beaming at her as if he was the happiest man on Risa. Also in the picture were the magenta-robed priestess, smiling at them beneficently, and Jim and Gaila, who seemed to be locked at the lips. They were in one of the many Houses of Joining that littered the main byways of the planet, surrounded by Risan fertility idols, holy symbols and clouds of incense.

“We must have had a lot to drink,” she said eventually.

“There might have been something in that incense,” McCoy offered.

They both fell silent again.

“We could retrace our steps?” Christine offered. “Go to the House of Joining and ask around?”

“Sounds like a plan,” McCoy agreed. “You feeling up to it?”

Christine’s stomach lurched in protest at the thought of moving far away from the bathroom, but she clamped down on the sensation ruthlessly.

“I need to get dressed first,” she said. “And you need a shirt that does up. And clothes that haven’t been vomited on.”

McCoy looked down at the pile of ripped and stained clothing on the floor.

“I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes,” he told her then left, still wearing the robe.  
Christine caught sight of herself in the mirror and groaned. Newlyweds weren’t supposed to look this bad on their first morning. She pulled on the first clothes she could find from her suitcase and spent the rest of the time before McCoy came back ruthlessly attacking her face with make up until she looked halfway human again.

She had often enjoyed spending time thinking about waking up naked in bed with McCoy – usually during boring inventory work – but she had never tried to do anything about it. Putting aside the fact that they had become good friends during their years aboard the _Enterprise_ , and also ignoring the fact that they both had _serious_ issues when it came to long term relationships, there was also the thorny problem of the fraternization regulations to consider.

Simply put, no officer could engage in a romantic or sexual relationship with a junior officer on board a Federation vessel unless the relationship began when the officers were of equal rank.

There were ways around the regs, of course; many people simply didn’t declare the relationship to the Operations Department, and tried to be as discreet as they could. Others staged acrimonious fights in public areas and saw each other secretly. Some waited until the bi-monthly shore leave came around and used their time off-ship to spend with their lovers. A few enterprising souls joined forces, requested rooming changes, and then split off unofficially into their respective partnerships although they were always at risk of unannounced cabin inspections.

All of this seemed a waste of time to Christine. McCoy ranked above her, as Lieutenant Commander. Unless she got a speedy promotion, or he got busted down a rank for being rude to the wrong admiral, there was no legal way for them to conduct a relationship. There was no way she was risking her commission sneaking about the ship, and she wasn’t the type for secret romances. For a start, if she _did_ get McCoy in her bed, there’d be no way that she’d be able to keep it a secret, if only to lord it over the rest of the crew who were equally attracted to him.

A horrible thought came to mind, so shocking that she actually dropped her lipstick onto the marble floor, shattering the case. They’d both woke up naked; had they had sex? She knew she was safe from pregnancy, as she had maintained her birth control medication primarily as a way to control her menses. But there were a hundred and one other nasty little things that could get passed on, and she didn’t know if he was clean. In fact, if he was anything like his best friend, the captain, he could be a walking petrie dish. She’d seen Kirk’s file, and overheard McCoy’s sexual health lectures, often given at full volume, to his friend.

Plus there was the fact that she could have had sex with the most attractive man she knew, and remembered nothing at all about it.

She hadn’t thought to bring a tricorder with her, and any...evidence of their activities would have been washed away by the shower. She cast an eye over the bed, but while she had been busy throwing up the sheets had been changed and new, fresh linens were on the bed.  
Damn it. She was either going to have to bring the subject up with McCoy, or wait until she got back to sickbay and run a scan on herself.

A knock at the door signalled McCoy’s presence, and she hurriedly finished putting the final touches to her face. She grabbed her bag and went out to the corridor.

“I’m clean,” McCoy blurted immediately, a mixture of panic and uncertainty on his face. It didn’t sit well on his handsome features.

“I know you are,” Christine said, puzzled. “You showered earlier.”

“No,” McCoy said, letting out an impatient breath. “I mean, sexually. I’m clean.”

“Oh,” said Christine in relief. “Me too. And my contraceptive shots are up to date.”

“Thank God for that, I’ve let mine slide,” McCoy said, his face losing the panicked look.

“Didn’t imagine you’d hook up with a hot blonde on sure leave?” Christine said as they started to make their way to the bank of turbolifts.

“I didn’t imagine that I’d hook up with anyone,” McCoy said stiffly. “Look, Christine, about last night...”

“Yes?” Christine replied, trying to keep her tone even. McCoy was clearly uncomfortable, and she didn’t want to make the situation any more difficult for him.

“Do you remember what we did?” McCoy asked, looking as ruffled as she’d ever seen him. “I mean, we woke up naked and...”

“I don’t know that we did anything,” Christine shrugged. “I don’t remember either.”

“Oh,” McCoy said as they entered the lift.

“Yes,” Christine replied as she hit the button for the ground floor. “Although it’s pretty unlikely, isn’t it? I mean, with the amount of alcohol we must have drunk, I wouldn’t have thought that you’d be able to...”

“I could have!” McCoy interrupted, sounding hurt. “I mean, it’s not impossible that...”

“I didn’t mean...” Christine said quickly, and they both looked away. Christine tried to fight the blush she knew was rising in her cheeks. Damn her complexion.

They remained silent for the rest of the ride, and talked again only to confirm the name of the House of Joining they were looking for.

 

“I am sorry Doctor McCoy, but annulments are not possible on Risa. We do not believe in the process.”

The priestess in magenta robes, the same poor priestess that had witnessed both Christine’s marriage and wedding breakfast debacle, stood firm behind the counter in the atrium of the House.

“You mean that’s it, there’s nothing you can do? Come on woman, be reasonable! There’s no way that we should have been married, we were both out of our heads! It was a damn fool thing to do.”

McCoy’s voluble disagreement would have had lesser clerics shaking in their robes, but he had met his match in this one. Even the McCoy Glare of Death wasn’t having any affect.

“We join all who wish to spend their lives in happy union with others, Doctor. That is our purpose, our calling. It is why this is called a House of Joining,” the priestess replied frostily. “And besides, you seemed incredibly keen on the idea at the time, as I recall.”

“Of course I was keen, I was drunk!” McCoy roared. Christine blanched, slightly.

“I see. And you wish to be wed every time you are inebriated, is that so?” the priestess asked, unfazed at the volume.

“No,” replied McCoy, scowling. “Of course not.”

“Well then, perhaps there is a reason why you decided to do it this time,” the priestess finished, cutting McCoy off neatly. “Good day, Doctor McCoy, and enjoy the remainder of your time of Risa. Feel free to return to us if you wish to marry somebody else before you leave.”

McCoy and the priestess stared daggers at each other for a while, but the priestess was on her home turf and there was a small crowd forming to watch the sideshow.

“Come on,” Christine said quietly, tugging at his arm. “We can sort this out back on board ship, file for a divorce with the JAG officer. It’ll be like it never happened.”

“Fine,” McCoy said shortly, and stalked his way down the street back towards the hotel.

“You picked a real charmer there,” the priestess said snottily.

“Watch yourself, or I’ll vomit on you next,” Christine warned, and took off after her husband.

 

They walked back through the main bar district, calling in at the places that they distinctly remembered, but all they got were shrugged shoulders from the Risan owners. Plenty of drunk humans in the bars last night, most of them officers on leave from the seven different ships in orbit.

“What now?” Christine asked as they left the last bar they remembered clearly.

“We weren’t alone in those pictures,” McCoy said thoughtfully.

“Jim and Gaila,” Christine said excitedly. “They should know what happened.”

“We should split up, tackle them separately,” McCoy told her. Christine nodded, in agreement.

“We could meet later, pool our information,” McCoy went on. “Maybe over dinner?”

The sky was beginning to darken, and the streets starting to become busier.

“I think I could handle that,” Christine said, after a brief internal check. “But nothing harder than lemonade.”

 

They separated at the hotel, and Christine tracked Gaila down by dint of finding the largest crowd of men she could and elbowing her way through to the centre of the group. She found Gaila perched on a bar stool, sipping a pink concoction that made Christine immediately want to throw up.

“Christine!” Gaila said joyfully. “Happy wedding day!”

“It really hasn’t been,” Christine sighed. “Can we talk, please? About last night?”

“I want all the details,” Gaila said lasciviously, shooing her devoted followers away and patting her hand on the next stool.

“I can’t remember any details!” Christine said, annoyed, hopping up. “I can’t remember anything past the first bar!”

“I told you those Orion Belters were too strong for you, but you wouldn’t listen,” Gaila said mildly. “We had already put away three by the time that Jim and the doctor arrived at the bar.”

 

 

“It was your fault,” McCoy said accusingly, poking a finger into Jim’s chest. “You got me drunk.”

“I don’t seem to remember you complaining at the time,” his friend protested. “I told you that we were going out to get drunk and get laid. At no point did I mention _marrying_ anybody. That was all you.”

“Really?” McCoy asked, disbelief writ large all over his face.

 

 

“Neither of you wanted to come and dance,” pouted Gaila as she sucked the last of the drink up from her glass.

Within seconds the barman had whipped it away and replaced it with a fresh one.

“So Jim and I hit the floor and left you and McCoy putting the drinks away. When I left you there you were talking about old relationships,” she continued.

“Really?” Christine asked. “That doesn’t sound like the sort of thing we usually talk about.”

“Maybe the alcohol helped,” Gaila said dryly. “You switched to mint juleps when McCoy arrived, and you two kept ordering them by the pitcher. That is, until you saw another table drinking tequila and you wanted to try that instead.”

“I have no idea how my liver is still functioning,” Christine said in wonder.

 

 

“By the time Gaila and I had finished showing the club just how the lambada is danced by _professionals_ , you had Christine sitting on your lap and she was licking salt from your neck,” Jim said happily to a horrified McCoy.

“You’re lying,” McCoy said hopefully, but then he remembered the marks on his neck and collarbone and he rubbed them absently.

“You called her your little vampire when she abandoned the drinking part and just got stuck in there,” Jim said, smiling broadly at the memory. “I never thought Chapel would be such an exhibitionist, but she didn’t seem to care who was watching.”

“Jim!” McCoy said sharply. “That’s my...nurse you’re talking about. Have a little respect.”

“She’s a lot more than that now, Bones,” Jim continued with glee.

 

 

“I suppose the idea was mine,” Gaila said thoughtfully.

“Yours?” squeaked Christine.

“You were both talking about how badly you’d been treated in the past, and were concocting wonderfully nasty things that could happen to your exes. I said, wouldn’t it be easier just for the two of you to get together and be happy, rather than being apart and miserable? Of course, I thought you’d just go back to your hotel room and have a lot of sex. I didn’t expect the doctor to propose like that.”

 

 

“I used what?” McCoy asked, looking a little shaken.

“Onion rings,” Jim clarified. “Or at least, something that looked and tasted like onion rings. You swiped them from the next table, got down on one knee and put an onion ring on her finger. Chapel fell about laughing, said yes, and ate the onion ring.”

 

 

“Then we all got in a cab, asked the driver for the nearest House of Joining and you know the rest,” Gaila said cheerfully. “It was a lovely service.”

 

 

“She couldn’t stand up by herself, so you picked her up for most of the ceremony,” Jim said. “I took some video. Hang on.”

He pulled a mini-PADD from his pocket and flicked through a few screens.

“I uploaded it this morning. There we go.”

McCoy grabbed the PADD from his friend. Sure enough, there on screen was a giggling Christine being hoisted into his arms. McCoy watched wordlessly as they stumbled their way through the Risan joining ceremony, laughing and exchanging brief kisses as the priestess wafted clouds of incense over them and ceremonially bound their hands with golden twine.

 

 

“Where did the rings come from?” Christine asked as she fiddled with the band on her wrist. “I didn’t think Risans used rings.”

“They don’t,” agreed Gaila. “But there was a man with a stall outside the House of Joining, and you insisted that you needed a ring because you sold your first one and ate your second one. You both tried to hide the one you picked out, but the vendor laughed because you both managed to pick halves of a matching pair.”

 

 

“We didn’t have any of that gold stuff on our wrists this morning,” McCoy said, peering at the video footage, which tended to slant at a drunken angle and then zoom in on Gaila’s breasts.

“It gets absorbed into your system overnight,” Jim told him. “It’s supposed to make your wedding night go with a bang.”

Jim opened his mouth to ask if the wedding night had, indeed, gone with a bang, but the look on McCoy’s face was enough to make him, for once, shut up. He didn’t even complain when McCoy confiscated his PADD as he left.

 

 

They met later, as agreed, for dinner in a small restaurant off the main drag. If either of them noticed that it was a romantic place full of loved-up couples, neither mentioned it. McCoy handed over the PADD for Christine to view the footage as soon as the waiter took their order. She watched it in silence, wincing slightly as she saw herself launch her lips hungrily at McCoy.

“Well,” she said eventually. “That’s...embarrassing.”

“There’s no need for embarrassment,” McCoy said gruffly. “I wasn’t exactly fighting you off with a stick.”

They made eye contact for a moment, then Christine burst out laughing. McCoy eventually followed suit.

“Of all the ridiculous clichés in the world,” Christine gasped.

“I haven’t been that drunk since I was a teenager,” McCoy snorted.

“It’s not as if we’ve even been on a date before!” Christine said, drying her eyes with a napkin. She continued to laugh for a little while before noticing that she was the only one making any noise.

“I’ve always wanted to,” McCoy admitted quietly, picking up the cutlery from his setting piece by piece and then putting it back again. He darted a look at her across the table.

Christine blinked.

“Really?” she asked.

“Really,” he assured her. “But the regs...”

“Yeah,” she said flatly.

“And I’m not a sneaking around sort of guy,” he continued, moving onto worrying at his napkin. “I couldn’t do that, Christine.”

“I know,” she reassured him. “I feel the same way.”

“I always thought you would,” he admitted. “So, I just didn’t say anything.”

There was silence at the table for a minute before Christine broke it by slamming her hand on the table.

“Damn the regs!” she said hotly. “Why should some idiots in Personnel a million miles away get to control what we do or don’t do? Aren’t we adults?”

“They’re there to protect you,” McCoy said gently. “In case I try to use my rank to coerce you.”

Christine stared at him across the table, eyebrow raised.

“Leonard McCoy, do you seriously think that there’s a chance in this or any other universe that you could make me do anything I didn’t want to do?”

“Hell no,” McCoy said immediately. “And I’m not dumb enough to try.”

“You’re damn right,” Christine said smugly.

“Of course, the regs don’t apply to us anymore,” McCoy said absently as their food arrived.

“They don’t?” Christine said, surprised.

“Fraternization regs don’t apply to married officers, obviously,” McCoy said. “Not even Starfleet is going to try to step between a legally married couple.”

“Huh,” Christine said thoughtfully.

There was silence for a few minutes as they ate their first course.

“So,” Christine asked, taking a piece of bread from the basket in the middle of the table. “Now that we’re legally married, in the eyes of Federation law, we could date each other?”

“Sure,” said McCoy slowly, “although obviously, we won’t be married for long. Just until the JAG officer files the paperwork, and gets a Federation judge to sign off on it.”

“We are quite far out,” Christine pointed out. “It could take weeks to finalise.”

“Weeks,” McCoy agreed. “Weeks where, _legally_ , the regs wouldn’t apply.”

Christine smiled at him over the table. McCoy smiled back.

Christine reached out her hand to the carafe of fruit juice they had opted for instead of the wine they had been offered, and filled both their glasses.

“To bureaucracy,” she said, raising her glass.

“Bureaucracy,” McCoy repeated, raising his and giving her a smile that promised many interesting evenings. Mornings, too, and the occasional afternoon.

 

In the corner of the restaurant, hidden inexpertly behind their menus, Jim and Gaila struggled to watch their friends through the crowd of diners.

“Well?” Gaila hissed. “What do you see?”

“Bones is smiling,” Jim reported, craning his neck. “And he’s holding her hand!”

“I’ve got to say, I never thought it would work,” Gaila said admiringly. “Trust you to think your way around the fraternization regs.”

“You know me and no-win situations,” Jim said, giving her his most devastating smile. “Compared to the Kobayashi Maru, this was a walk in the park.”

“Hmm,” agreed Gaila. “This is certainly a way around the issue. We’ll have to remember it.”

Jim frowned.

“Remember it? Why?”

Gaila smiled knowingly at him.

“Tell me Jim,” she purred. “Just how is Janice right now?”

Jim gulped, Gaila laughed, and in the opposite corner of the restaurant, the newlyweds kissed for the first time.

Well, the first time that they could remember, anyway.


End file.
